“I presume you’ll want hot biscuits for supper, too?” asked Clay.
The visitors were too busy with the game to do more than shake their heads.
“We usually have three kinds of meat, fish, baked potatoes, pancakes, light bread, pie, honey, and three or four vegetables on the side,” Alex. explained, with a wink at Mose, who sat in a corner next to the deck with Joe and Teddy watching the meat disappearing from a “drumstick” he was busily engaged on.
“An’ possum pie!” the little negro boy added, licking his chops.
“Sure! I forgot the possum pie!” Alex. declared. “Excuse me!”
“Certainly!” laughed Gregg, “and we’ll excuse you, too, for all future products of the imagination! The twenty course dinners at the La Salle haven’t got anything on this little banquet! For my part, I don’t care whether we ever get out of here, now, or not.”
“Some day,” Alex. observed, “I’ll show you how to cook a steak à la brigand! After you eat one of them you’ll go hungry for a week before you’ll touch anything else!”
“You may lead me to one of them any time you see fit!” Eddie laughed.
The river was still roaring and foaming about the Rambler, caught in the narrow space between the two cypress trees. Just where the boat lay the current turned away to the east, that is the current of the lagoon. The Mississippi was, of course, across the inundated spit of land which lay on the west shore of the river and on the east side of the bayou or lagoon.
Just as the boys finished their somewhat delayed supper the lights of a steamer showed up the stream. It passed the mouth of the bayou and hugged the opposite shore of the Mississippi for a time, then headed for the west shore.